Fully Authoritarian
World’s Population
Population
HRF classifies the Côte d’Ivoire as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
Côte d’Ivoire has undergone continuous authoritarian consolidation since President Alassane Ouattara took power through a civil war sparked by disputed 2010 presidential elections. Ouattara has secured four consecutive terms through constitutional manipulation, legal manoeuvres to exclude his most serious political opponents, and repression of dissent.
Elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. The regime systematically bars Ouattara’s most serious political opponents from the presidential ballot through its control of the electoral and judicial institutions, with the authority to validate the eligibility of presidential candidates and the results of national elections. As a result, Ouattara has claimed landslide victories in the 2015, 2020, and 2025 presidential elections, each of which has taken place without Ouattara’s most serious political opponent(s) and a partial opposition boycott.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. Freedom of speech is increasingly under threat since the adoption of the 2022 laws criminalizing defamation deemed to threaten the national interest and the publication of false news.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. The nation’s highest court, the Constitutional Council, has consistently ruled in favor of the regime in matters of national elections and validating its constitutional amendments, including disqualifying five prominent opposition candidates from the 2025 presidential race. Accountability for government officials is rare; In the aftermath of the civil war, the courts focused prosecutions exclusively on leaders and members of the defeated Gbagbo regime while failing to prosecute anyone from Ouattara’s victorious side.
In Côte d’Ivoire, elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. The regime of Alassane Ouattara has systematically excluded his most serious political opponents from running for election and undermined independent electoral oversight bodies. As a result, elections have been marked by opposition boycotts and violent repression of protests against official results.
The regime has systematically and unfairly barred a real, mainstream opposition party or candidate from competing in elections. Tactics include the selective application of eligibility rules and undue influence over judicial decisions to exclude the most serious opposition presidential candidates. Ouattara secured a fourth term in the 2025 elections after the Constitutional Court, which is subservient to the regime, excluded five senior opposition figures from the ballot, including Ouattara’s two main rivals, former President Lauren Gbagbo and Credit Suisse ex-CEO Tidjane Thiam. As a result, Ouattara claimed 89% of the vote. A similar scenario occurred in 2020, when the Court disqualified Ouattara’s two main rivals at the time, Gbagbo and former Prime Minister Guillaume Soro.
The regime has skewed the electoral playing field so much so that it generally claims victory with a very high vote share. Since coming to power, Ouattara’s regime has cleared the electoral playing field of any serious competition, to the point of claiming a landslide victory in each presidential election by an average of 84 points over his nearest rival. In the 2025 elections, Ouattara claimed 89% of the vote. Subsequently, the ruling Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) increased its control of parliament from 54% of seats to 77% of seats. In 2020, Ouattara claimed 94% of the vote after an opposition boycott. In 2015, Ouattara claimed 83% of the votes.
The regime has seriously undermined independent electoral oversight. The incumbent regime maintains influence over the composition and functioning of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI). Initially, the law establishing the Commission in 2001 offered the executive branch such disproportionate representation in the CEI that in 2016, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights ruled that Côte d’Ivoire didn’t fully comply with its obligation to create “an independent and impartial electoral body.” While the regime enacted some reforms to bring a better balance to the central Commission, the African Court ruled again in 2020 that a “manifest imbalance” heavily favoring the ruling party in the number of chairpersons of the local electoral commissions remained.
A mainstream opposition party has boycotted the elections as a way of protesting the lack of free and fair electoral competition. Boycotts reflect the opposition’s perception that institutional and judicial constraints, including selective prosecutions and the exclusion of key political candidates, have unjustly skewed the electoral field in favor of the incumbent regime. The real opposition totally boycotted the first post-civil war national elections, the 2013 parliamentary elections, in protest of the imprisonment of former president Laurent Gbagbo and former Gbagbo regime youth minister Charles Ble Goude at the ICC in The Hague, as well as the imprisonment of other Gbagbo regime officials and supporters. The opposition also partially boycotted the 2015 presidential polls. Together, these boycotts contributed to offering Ouattara an electoral advantage.
The regime has engaged in systematic, significant electoral law manipulation, voting irregularities, or electoral fraud. Since coming to power, the regime has pushed through controversial constitutional changes to tip the electoral playing field in its favor. For example, in 2016, the regime leveraged its supermajority in parliament to pass a new Constitution which removed the age limit of 75 for presidential candidates, and reset the two-term limit, paving the way for then 74-year-old Ouattara to run in 2020. The new Constitution also scrapped the eligibility rule requiring that both parents of presidential candidates be native-born Ivorians, an issue that had previously haunted Ouattara and had resulted in his exclusion.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. While Cote d’Ivoire has a vibrant and pluralistic media and civil society landscape, the regime has intimidated journalists, opposition figures, and civil society actors through arbitrary arrests, regulatory censorship, lawfare, and harassment, particularly during politically sensitive periods. Security forces have also occasionally repressed peaceful protests and demonstrations.
The regime responds to media criticism of its most important policies with regulatory censorship of media outlets, arbitrary detentions, and criminal prosecutions of journalists. The National Press Authority (ANP), a media regulatory body—whose members are appointed by a decree of the Council of Ministers based on nominations by the minister of communications— has repeatedly sanctioned critical newspapers with suspensions and hefty fines. For example, in February 2023, ANP suspended 26 editions of Le Temps, a newspaper close to former president Laurent Gbagbo, and imposed a one-month suspension on its editor, Yacouba Gban, after the news outlet announced its intent to publish an article critical of the Ouattara regime. In April, ANP suspended Le Temps again for three months over coverage critical of the judiciary’s politically-charged prosecution of opposition figures.
The regime targets journalists with lawfare based on repressive laws criminalizing criticism of senior government figures. In 2020, for instance, two journalists, including the editor-in-chief of Le Temps, a newspaper close to Former president Laurent Gbagbo, were arrested for “undermining the honor and respect of several members of the government” and fined CFA Francs 5 million (about $8,600) over a publication accusing the instrumentalization of the judiciary by the executive branch. In addition to journalists, the regime targets political opposition. In August 2025, regime security forces detained six members of Gbagbo’s African Peoples’ Party–Côte d’Ivoire (PPA-CI) in the run-up to the presidential election.
Non-state actors with ties to the regime have contributed to seriously intimidating independent, dissenting media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, or members of the general public. In March 2023, members of the Alliance pour la Jeunesse Ivoirienne (AJI), a movement close to the ruling Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) party, laid siege before breaking into the residence of the PPA-CI Vice President, Marie Odette Lorougnon, after she described 46 Ivorian soldiers detained for 10 months in Mali as mercenaries, which was quickly considered an “inflammatory statement.”
The regime has unfairly repressed protests or gatherings. Although political and civil society organizations and union groups largely operate freely throughout the country, the regime unfairly restricts or suppresses dissenting protests. In October 2025, the National Security Council announced that any meeting or public protest that challenged the Constitutional Council’s decisions would be banned. The Prefect of Abidjan banned two peaceful opposition demonstrations amid rising tensions ahead of the presidential election. On October 11, 2025, security forces dispersed a peaceful protest using tear gas and arrested 237 people in Abidjan. In December 2022, around 40 doctoral students who demonstrated peacefully to denounce precarious working conditions were arrested and sentenced to four months in prison for “disturbing public order.”
The regime has seriously and unfairly censored dissenting speech. In June 2025, human rights activist Dr. Gervais Sako Boga fled the country after receiving threatening messages from security officials, including Director General of the National Police Youssouf Kouyaté, over a public speech in which he criticized Ouattara’s intention to seek a fourth term and irregularities in the electoral register ahead of the October 2025 elections. In September 2025, security agents detained political activist Ibrahim Zigui after he urged supporters of the opposition PPA-CI party to prepare for protests ahead of the Constitutional Council’s ruling on the approved candidates for the presidential ballot. In August 2022, civil society activist Pulchérie Gbalet served more than five months in prison on politically-motivated charges of colluding “with the agents of a foreign power likely to be harmful to the military and diplomatic situation in Côte d’Ivoire” after she called for a “diplomatic solution” to the crisis involving 49 Ivorian soldiers detained in Bamako, Mali. In 2020, she was also detained for eight months in prison for “disturbing public order” after she called for a demonstration against Ouattara’s decision to run for a third time in the 2020 presidential election.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. A powerful executive dominates the institutional architecture and its extensive constitutional powers, along with the regime’s supermajority in the legislature, effectively subordinating the legislative and judicial branches to extensions of the regime in power, negating meaningful checks and balances. As a result, courts systematically enable the regime’s attempts to repress criticism; the regime retaliates against dissenting judges and subjects judicial institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. Judicial, legislative, or executive institutions fail to hold regime officials accountable.
Courts have systematically enabled the regime’s attempts to significantly undermine electoral competition or make the electoral process significantly skewed in its favor. This pattern is enabled by President Ouattara’s significant influence over the Constitutional Council, which determines the eligibility of presidential candidates and validates election results. Its members are appointed by the president and heads of the two chambers of the ruling party-dominated National Assembly. With the Council stacked with allies of the regime, it has systematically ruled in political alignment with the ruling RHDP. For example, the Constitutional Council disqualified five prominent opposition candidates from the 2025 presidential race, allowing Ouattara to run without a serious opponent on the ballot. Ahead of the 2020 elections, the Constitutional Council sided with Ouattara’s questionable interpretation of the application of the two-term limit on presidential mandates and cleared his eligibility to run for a contentious third term. It also proclaimed Ouattara’s victory in polls largely boycotted by the real opposition with 95% of the votes.
Courts have systematically, frequently, and unfairly failed to check, or enable, the regime’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. For example, in October 2025, a court convicted 26 members and supporters of the main opposition PPCA-CI party on politically-motivated charges of disturbing public order for participating in a demonstration against the disqualification of opposition candidates from the ballot. The court handed the activists a heavy 36-month prison sentence. Between December 2024 and April 2025, a court in San Pedro ordered the detention of environmental and land rights activists Vincent Djiropo and Dominique Mensah, along with 18 members of the Winnin community, on charges of “undermining public order” and “disseminating false information via electronic means.” The charges were based on their peaceful activism against the Ministry of Water and Forests’ privatization of the Monogaga forest.
The regime has undermined institutional independence to the point where cases or issues challenging the regime are no longer brought or are frequently dismissed. In response to the regime’s policy of shielding its members and allies implicated in the violence following the disputed 2010 elections, a number of groups of survivors have sought justice in international courts. In November 2016, Action for the Promotion of Human Rights (APDH), an independent civil society organization, took the Ivorian government before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to seek redress over the regime’s dominance of the Independent Electoral Commission. In December 2024, human rights groups, including the Ivorian League for Human Rights (LIDHO) and the Ivorian Human Rights Movement (MIDH), filed a case before the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) challenging the regime’s 2018 proclamation of a general amnesty for perpetrators of the conflict. In another case in October 2022, four women and their daughters who survived brutal sexual violence during the conflict filed a case against the government before the ECOWAS court.
Judicial, legislative, or executive institutions have frequently and unfairly failed to hold regime officials accountable. Upon assuming power, the regime launched politically motivated prosecutions against 84 allies of former President Gbagbo. However, regime officials, including close collaborators of the president, have rarely been prosecuted. For instance, in 2018, the regime invoked “ national reconciliation” to grant a general amnesty to 800 people implicated in abuses during the 2010-2011 country’s civil war.
The regime has systematically subjected judicial institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. The Constitutional framework grants the President significant power in judicial appointments and subordinates the Supreme Council of the Judiciary (CSM), the judicial oversight body, as an executive advisory institution. Upon taking power in 2011, Ouattara totally overhauled the composition of the judiciary and stacked it with politically aligned judicial officers. Since then, he has periodically reshuffled the judiciary to serve his interests. For example, in August 2026, two months before the presidential elections, Ouattara made 66 judicial appointments.
The regime has systematically subjected legislative institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. In 2016, the regime amended the constitution to establish a Senate, with one-third of senators appointed by the president. In 2020, the regime modified the constitution to establish the post of Vice-President. The move allowed Ouattara to handpick an unelected successor in case of incapacity, instead of the speaker of the National Assembly, as was previously the case.
HRF classifies the Côte d’Ivoire as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
Côte d’Ivoire has undergone continuous authoritarian consolidation since President Alassane Ouattara took power through a civil war sparked by disputed 2010 presidential elections. Ouattara has secured four consecutive terms through constitutional manipulation, legal manoeuvres to exclude his most serious political opponents, and repression of dissent.
Elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. The regime systematically bars Ouattara’s most serious political opponents from the presidential ballot through its control of the electoral and judicial institutions, with the authority to validate the eligibility of presidential candidates and the results of national elections. As a result, Ouattara has claimed landslide victories in the 2015, 2020, and 2025 presidential elections, each of which has taken place without Ouattara’s most serious political opponent(s) and a partial opposition boycott.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. Freedom of speech is increasingly under threat since the adoption of the 2022 laws criminalizing defamation deemed to threaten the national interest and the publication of false news.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. The nation’s highest court, the Constitutional Council, has consistently ruled in favor of the regime in matters of national elections and validating its constitutional amendments, including disqualifying five prominent opposition candidates from the 2025 presidential race. Accountability for government officials is rare; In the aftermath of the civil war, the courts focused prosecutions exclusively on leaders and members of the defeated Gbagbo regime while failing to prosecute anyone from Ouattara’s victorious side.
In Côte d’Ivoire, elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. The regime of Alassane Ouattara has systematically excluded his most serious political opponents from running for election and undermined independent electoral oversight bodies. As a result, elections have been marked by opposition boycotts and violent repression of protests against official results.
The regime has systematically and unfairly barred a real, mainstream opposition party or candidate from competing in elections. Tactics include the selective application of eligibility rules and undue influence over judicial decisions to exclude the most serious opposition presidential candidates. Ouattara secured a fourth term in the 2025 elections after the Constitutional Court, which is subservient to the regime, excluded five senior opposition figures from the ballot, including Ouattara’s two main rivals, former President Lauren Gbagbo and Credit Suisse ex-CEO Tidjane Thiam. As a result, Ouattara claimed 89% of the vote. A similar scenario occurred in 2020, when the Court disqualified Ouattara’s two main rivals at the time, Gbagbo and former Prime Minister Guillaume Soro.
The regime has skewed the electoral playing field so much so that it generally claims victory with a very high vote share. Since coming to power, Ouattara’s regime has cleared the electoral playing field of any serious competition, to the point of claiming a landslide victory in each presidential election by an average of 84 points over his nearest rival. In the 2025 elections, Ouattara claimed 89% of the vote. Subsequently, the ruling Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) increased its control of parliament from 54% of seats to 77% of seats. In 2020, Ouattara claimed 94% of the vote after an opposition boycott. In 2015, Ouattara claimed 83% of the votes.
The regime has seriously undermined independent electoral oversight. The incumbent regime maintains influence over the composition and functioning of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI). Initially, the law establishing the Commission in 2001 offered the executive branch such disproportionate representation in the CEI that in 2016, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights ruled that Côte d’Ivoire didn’t fully comply with its obligation to create “an independent and impartial electoral body.” While the regime enacted some reforms to bring a better balance to the central Commission, the African Court ruled again in 2020 that a “manifest imbalance” heavily favoring the ruling party in the number of chairpersons of the local electoral commissions remained.
A mainstream opposition party has boycotted the elections as a way of protesting the lack of free and fair electoral competition. Boycotts reflect the opposition’s perception that institutional and judicial constraints, including selective prosecutions and the exclusion of key political candidates, have unjustly skewed the electoral field in favor of the incumbent regime. The real opposition totally boycotted the first post-civil war national elections, the 2013 parliamentary elections, in protest of the imprisonment of former president Laurent Gbagbo and former Gbagbo regime youth minister Charles Ble Goude at the ICC in The Hague, as well as the imprisonment of other Gbagbo regime officials and supporters. The opposition also partially boycotted the 2015 presidential polls. Together, these boycotts contributed to offering Ouattara an electoral advantage.
The regime has engaged in systematic, significant electoral law manipulation, voting irregularities, or electoral fraud. Since coming to power, the regime has pushed through controversial constitutional changes to tip the electoral playing field in its favor. For example, in 2016, the regime leveraged its supermajority in parliament to pass a new Constitution which removed the age limit of 75 for presidential candidates, and reset the two-term limit, paving the way for then 74-year-old Ouattara to run in 2020. The new Constitution also scrapped the eligibility rule requiring that both parents of presidential candidates be native-born Ivorians, an issue that had previously haunted Ouattara and had resulted in his exclusion.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. While Cote d’Ivoire has a vibrant and pluralistic media and civil society landscape, the regime has intimidated journalists, opposition figures, and civil society actors through arbitrary arrests, regulatory censorship, lawfare, and harassment, particularly during politically sensitive periods. Security forces have also occasionally repressed peaceful protests and demonstrations.
The regime responds to media criticism of its most important policies with regulatory censorship of media outlets, arbitrary detentions, and criminal prosecutions of journalists. The National Press Authority (ANP), a media regulatory body—whose members are appointed by a decree of the Council of Ministers based on nominations by the minister of communications— has repeatedly sanctioned critical newspapers with suspensions and hefty fines. For example, in February 2023, ANP suspended 26 editions of Le Temps, a newspaper close to former president Laurent Gbagbo, and imposed a one-month suspension on its editor, Yacouba Gban, after the news outlet announced its intent to publish an article critical of the Ouattara regime. In April, ANP suspended Le Temps again for three months over coverage critical of the judiciary’s politically-charged prosecution of opposition figures.
The regime targets journalists with lawfare based on repressive laws criminalizing criticism of senior government figures. In 2020, for instance, two journalists, including the editor-in-chief of Le Temps, a newspaper close to Former president Laurent Gbagbo, were arrested for “undermining the honor and respect of several members of the government” and fined CFA Francs 5 million (about $8,600) over a publication accusing the instrumentalization of the judiciary by the executive branch. In addition to journalists, the regime targets political opposition. In August 2025, regime security forces detained six members of Gbagbo’s African Peoples’ Party–Côte d’Ivoire (PPA-CI) in the run-up to the presidential election.
Non-state actors with ties to the regime have contributed to seriously intimidating independent, dissenting media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, or members of the general public. In March 2023, members of the Alliance pour la Jeunesse Ivoirienne (AJI), a movement close to the ruling Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) party, laid siege before breaking into the residence of the PPA-CI Vice President, Marie Odette Lorougnon, after she described 46 Ivorian soldiers detained for 10 months in Mali as mercenaries, which was quickly considered an “inflammatory statement.”
The regime has unfairly repressed protests or gatherings. Although political and civil society organizations and union groups largely operate freely throughout the country, the regime unfairly restricts or suppresses dissenting protests. In October 2025, the National Security Council announced that any meeting or public protest that challenged the Constitutional Council’s decisions would be banned. The Prefect of Abidjan banned two peaceful opposition demonstrations amid rising tensions ahead of the presidential election. On October 11, 2025, security forces dispersed a peaceful protest using tear gas and arrested 237 people in Abidjan. In December 2022, around 40 doctoral students who demonstrated peacefully to denounce precarious working conditions were arrested and sentenced to four months in prison for “disturbing public order.”
The regime has seriously and unfairly censored dissenting speech. In June 2025, human rights activist Dr. Gervais Sako Boga fled the country after receiving threatening messages from security officials, including Director General of the National Police Youssouf Kouyaté, over a public speech in which he criticized Ouattara’s intention to seek a fourth term and irregularities in the electoral register ahead of the October 2025 elections. In September 2025, security agents detained political activist Ibrahim Zigui after he urged supporters of the opposition PPA-CI party to prepare for protests ahead of the Constitutional Council’s ruling on the approved candidates for the presidential ballot. In August 2022, civil society activist Pulchérie Gbalet served more than five months in prison on politically-motivated charges of colluding “with the agents of a foreign power likely to be harmful to the military and diplomatic situation in Côte d’Ivoire” after she called for a “diplomatic solution” to the crisis involving 49 Ivorian soldiers detained in Bamako, Mali. In 2020, she was also detained for eight months in prison for “disturbing public order” after she called for a demonstration against Ouattara’s decision to run for a third time in the 2020 presidential election.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. A powerful executive dominates the institutional architecture and its extensive constitutional powers, along with the regime’s supermajority in the legislature, effectively subordinating the legislative and judicial branches to extensions of the regime in power, negating meaningful checks and balances. As a result, courts systematically enable the regime’s attempts to repress criticism; the regime retaliates against dissenting judges and subjects judicial institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. Judicial, legislative, or executive institutions fail to hold regime officials accountable.
Courts have systematically enabled the regime’s attempts to significantly undermine electoral competition or make the electoral process significantly skewed in its favor. This pattern is enabled by President Ouattara’s significant influence over the Constitutional Council, which determines the eligibility of presidential candidates and validates election results. Its members are appointed by the president and heads of the two chambers of the ruling party-dominated National Assembly. With the Council stacked with allies of the regime, it has systematically ruled in political alignment with the ruling RHDP. For example, the Constitutional Council disqualified five prominent opposition candidates from the 2025 presidential race, allowing Ouattara to run without a serious opponent on the ballot. Ahead of the 2020 elections, the Constitutional Council sided with Ouattara’s questionable interpretation of the application of the two-term limit on presidential mandates and cleared his eligibility to run for a contentious third term. It also proclaimed Ouattara’s victory in polls largely boycotted by the real opposition with 95% of the votes.
Courts have systematically, frequently, and unfairly failed to check, or enable, the regime’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. For example, in October 2025, a court convicted 26 members and supporters of the main opposition PPCA-CI party on politically-motivated charges of disturbing public order for participating in a demonstration against the disqualification of opposition candidates from the ballot. The court handed the activists a heavy 36-month prison sentence. Between December 2024 and April 2025, a court in San Pedro ordered the detention of environmental and land rights activists Vincent Djiropo and Dominique Mensah, along with 18 members of the Winnin community, on charges of “undermining public order” and “disseminating false information via electronic means.” The charges were based on their peaceful activism against the Ministry of Water and Forests’ privatization of the Monogaga forest.
The regime has undermined institutional independence to the point where cases or issues challenging the regime are no longer brought or are frequently dismissed. In response to the regime’s policy of shielding its members and allies implicated in the violence following the disputed 2010 elections, a number of groups of survivors have sought justice in international courts. In November 2016, Action for the Promotion of Human Rights (APDH), an independent civil society organization, took the Ivorian government before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to seek redress over the regime’s dominance of the Independent Electoral Commission. In December 2024, human rights groups, including the Ivorian League for Human Rights (LIDHO) and the Ivorian Human Rights Movement (MIDH), filed a case before the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) challenging the regime’s 2018 proclamation of a general amnesty for perpetrators of the conflict. In another case in October 2022, four women and their daughters who survived brutal sexual violence during the conflict filed a case against the government before the ECOWAS court.
Judicial, legislative, or executive institutions have frequently and unfairly failed to hold regime officials accountable. Upon assuming power, the regime launched politically motivated prosecutions against 84 allies of former President Gbagbo. However, regime officials, including close collaborators of the president, have rarely been prosecuted. For instance, in 2018, the regime invoked “ national reconciliation” to grant a general amnesty to 800 people implicated in abuses during the 2010-2011 country’s civil war.
The regime has systematically subjected judicial institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. The Constitutional framework grants the President significant power in judicial appointments and subordinates the Supreme Council of the Judiciary (CSM), the judicial oversight body, as an executive advisory institution. Upon taking power in 2011, Ouattara totally overhauled the composition of the judiciary and stacked it with politically aligned judicial officers. Since then, he has periodically reshuffled the judiciary to serve his interests. For example, in August 2026, two months before the presidential elections, Ouattara made 66 judicial appointments.
The regime has systematically subjected legislative institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. In 2016, the regime amended the constitution to establish a Senate, with one-third of senators appointed by the president. In 2020, the regime modified the constitution to establish the post of Vice-President. The move allowed Ouattara to handpick an unelected successor in case of incapacity, instead of the speaker of the National Assembly, as was previously the case.
